S'ly swells to end the week, larger S/SW swell next week

Craig Brokensha picture
Craig Brokensha (Craig)

Nias, Mentawai, South Sumatra forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Tuesday 9th August)

Best Days: Exposed south facing breaks Wednesday through Saturday, usual suspects from Sunday afternoon

This week and next (Aug 10 - 19)

We're currently seeing moderate to large amounts of S/SW groundswell across the region under variable winds. The swell will take a more acute S'ly angle through tomorrow and Thursday, generated by a stalling mid-latitude low south-west of WA over the weekend.

This is right on the edge of our swell window and not too favourable but exposed breaks to southerly swell should continue to offer sets in the 6ft+ range through most of tomorrow, easing back from 6ft or so Thursday.

Smaller waves are then due from Friday, easing back from 4-5ft, bottoming out through Saturday.

Variable winds are due for the most part, favouring those spots picking up the most size.

A small and inconsistent background SW groundswell is due Sunday to 3-4ft or so through the day, easing back into Monday.

From early next week though we'll see some more promising frontal activity firing up through our southern swell window. This will be a series of back to back mid-latitude frontal systems, the best aligned pushing north-east towards us from south-east of South Africa later this week.

A slow moving fetch of of SW gales will be projected slowly towards us into the weekend, generating a large S/SW groundswell for later Wednesday and more so Thursday to the 8ft range across exposed breaks.

Before this a smaller S/SW pulse to 6ft is due later Tuesday afternoon, holding into Wednesday morning in the 6ft+ range.

Variable winds will continue into next week, taking a slight SE bias through Wednesday and Thursday, but we'll have another look at this in our next update.

16 day Mentawai forecast graph
16 day Nias forecast graph
16 day South Sumatra forecast graph